Ninjas Escape With the Treasure in 28mm 'Test of Honor' Samurai Game

    Tom's mounted noble charges into the village center in his game-long attempt to save his bride

  We gave Test of Honor Samurai rules a try out yesterday evening at our regular Sunday evening gaming get-together. It was a kind of free-for-all scenario with eight players. It is a tribute to the rules that the game actually flowed well and there wasn't a lot of waiting around for your turn. My friend Mike S was running it, and was using some modifications that he'd seen at a sprawling game at Historicon. He had to adapt on the fly when players on the same side of the table decided to attack each other. It worked out, though.  

    One of the clans gets ready to cross the stream to join the fray in the village center

 

I was playing the Ninja force, which doesn't begin the game deployed ontable. My mission was to hijack a payment going from one clan to another. We didn't know which clans were involved in the transaction, nor the form of the payment it would be. Everyone else had similarly vague missions, which he intended to make each player not trust the other, including their neighbor. It worked like a charm for Mike W, who promptly attacked Keith's force in the early stages of the game. To be specific, he sent two of his samurai over to kill the draft ox pulling the cart containing Keith's two female samurai. The ox proved to be made of sterner stuff than expected, resisting two swings of the sword by two separate warriors. 

    Hilarity ensues as 8 factions tussle near the village in the center of the board

Tom also charged into the fray early, when he saw someone upend a palanquin containing his noble's bride. The fact that the bride jumped out, armed with a sword, didn't deter him from shouting to any and all in the area "hands off" his bride. He was the only mounted figure in the game, and he was still swinging his sword and upholding his bride's honor (or avenging her after she was slain) at the end of the game. I seized upon this confusion in the village center to have my ninjas bolt from inside one of the houses and search the inside of the palanquin. Mike confirmed it contained the treasure I was looking for, announcing it to the table at large. This meant that slowly many other players shifted from their local feud to attack my black-robed thieves trying to abscond with the treasure.

    'Ha, haaa!!' My Ninjas reveal themselves and then discover the treasure in the overturned palanquin

The ninjas darted back into the house from which they'd came, and my other ninjas emerged to fight off the attacks of the other players. As the ninjas, I could remove any civilian figure and replace it with my own undeployed troops, representing us uncloaking our disguise. I was rolling fairly well and was able to fight off Mike S's mercenaries who, unbeknownst to me, were also hiding in the very same house on the second floor. I sent the trio of archers holding the treasure out the back door, hoping to bolt for the board edge. Joel's clan raced to cut off my retreat, but I was able to beat back his attacks, for the most part. Opposite Joel, Keith and Mike W's clans ceased their battle, perking their heads up, "Treasure...?" They also moved forward, trying to close the jaws I was attempting to escape from. 

    Escaping our the back door with the treasure, we are immediately beset by Mike S & Joel's forces

There was lots of laughter around the table as we mocked each other's vague missions. We began pulling up Google Translate and typing in our taunts to each other, to read aloud in Japanese by the female voice on the app.  Just when it looked like the last of my archers carrying the treasure was going to go down, the games was called on account of time. The 4th quarter reprieve by the clock meant we had possession of our objective at game's end. Of course, I declared my victory to the jeers of the other players.

    My ninjas cut down one of Keith's samurai who attempt to waylay us and steal our seized treasure

I'm sure there were numerous things we did wrong in our first Test of Honor game. Still, the game flowed well and eventually the various factions came to blows. I would probably tweak the scenario to give incentive to factions on the opposite sides of the table to attack each other. Maybe victory points for killing members of rival clans (who are the ones opposite you)? There can also be secondary objectives for each player, like Tom's protecting/rescuing his bride, my hunt for treasure, etc..

    'The Affair of the Ox Cart' sparks a clash between Mike W and Keith's clans

I'm sure we'll play more Test of Honor soon since most seemed to have a good time in the game. My friend Abel D runs the game regularly at HMGS Great Lakes and regional conventions. I'd never got a chance to play in one, but everyone seemed to be having a good time at his table. Now I can see why, and look forward to the next time Mike breaks out his samurais, ronin, ashigaru, and ninjas!

    The palanquin moments before it is overturned and the donnybrook in the village begins...

MINIATURES Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Miniatures acquired in 2025: 288
  
• Miniatures painted in 2025: 161

TERRAIN Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Terrain acquired in 2025: 36
  
• Terrain painted in 2025: 50

SCATTER Acquired vs. Painted Tally for 2025

• Scatter acquired in 2025: 115
  
• Scatter painted in 2025: 150

First Playtest of Samurai Rules

Brother against brother in Japan! Allen-san and Joel-san prepare to engage in battle in our Samurai rules playtest

I had been urging Mike Stelzer to bring the Samurai miniature rules he's been working on to one of our Sunday evening gaming sessions. He's been revamping the rules to simplify them from his first iteration years ago. Once Mike explained everything to us, they definitely seemed fairly straight-forward. We learned the rules as he had as fill in our card for our force of ashigaru, samurai, and lord.

A peaceful village - but not for long! Six gamers are about to engage in some serious playtest mayhem in Japan

He and Keith had set up a peaceful village for the six of us players, and it was our job to wreck that peace -- and incidentally, chase off the enemy clan opposite us. My force was composed of five ashigaru (ordinary soldiers) with bows, two samurai with katanas, and a samurai lord in full armor with katana. In Mike's system, each class of troops (he uses the term "rank"), uses a certain size dice for activation. My ashigaru would roll a d6 to activate, samurai a d8, and the lord a d10. The number you score determines how many actions you receive for your activation, from one to four.

My enemy crests the hill in the distance -- Keith's clan! Hated rollers of average or above-average dice!!

Mike's intention is for those using larger dice to receive more actions, and for the most part, my opponent Keith adhered to his direction. On the other hand, I proved to him that -- no matter what size dice you get me to roll -- I can find the "1" on it! I thought I was being clever seeking out the high ground as a firing platform and shooting at Keith's yari (polearm) ashigaru and samurai as they closed with us. Keith took advantage of the +3 Mike gave to troops hiding behind a tree, and darted from tree to tree, affording us almost no chance at inflicting hits on them as they closed. Under this playtest version, missile troops need to triple the score of the target to cause any hits. Since even a roll of a "1" meant he scored a "4", it didn't matter what I rolled on my ashigaru's d6 attack. We were just hitting a lot of tree trunks! Mike agreed we probably needed to look at that chart for the next playtest.

On my left, my ally Joel-san moves up...destined to receive the same smack-down the my troops are about to receive!

Once Keith got close enough to charge into combat, he proved that his yari-armed ashigaru were pretty good at slicing and dicing my troops. He used the rules effectively, ganging up on lone targets and inflicting hits on them. I foolishly ran my lord up into combat against a lone ashigaru and promptly rolled a "1" to the ashigaru's "6". We misread the chart and said the result was my lord was knocked down, when it should have been a recoil. The way Mike had structured the combat results, the worst that can happen to the attacker (I believe) is to recoil out of combat. He agreed that the chart needed to be streamlined for the next game and the results more simplified.

My samurai lord in the bottom center proves his tactical ineptitude -- being engaged by four enemy!

Either way, my lord's face plant was symptomatic of the way my dice were going, this evening. One by one, Keith ganged up on and sliced and diced my clan to ribbons. When both of my samurai were down and one or two of the ashigaru, the lord (he had survived, amazingly!) decided we had diced with fate long enough and ordered a retreat. Keith was kind, and let us abscond from the field, with the loss of only one of his ashigaru.

Fratricide in action! Things are getting ugly as older brother Allen puts the hurt on younger Joel-san

In the middle of the table, brothers Allen and Joel had waged a bitter, gang-fight. As the elder, Allen got the better of my ally Joel, and his survivors were also soon retreating alongside me. On our left, Steve had decided to make things difficult for Bruce and defend the walls of his lord's home. This meant Bruce had to do end arounds and leap over the walls to engage him. Their battle was somewhat indecisive at that point when we decided that the good guys had had enough.

Alarmed at the way Joel and I are folding like a house of cards, Steve would soon retreat behind his walls

The rules were easy to learn, and played very quickly, which is what Mike was hoping for. We discussed tweaks to them for future games for awhile. Keith and I felt that a differential chart would be better than one that provided results when you scored 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x your opponent. With wounds being a cumulative -1 to your combat rolls, there is a distinct possibility of rolling negative numbers. I think you'd want to avoid arguments of how many times a roll of "2" beats a "-1" by, or results like that.

It's time to cross the bridge and draw the bamboo curtain on this sorry disaster...!

This is the first time we've played this iteration of the rules, though, so it provided a good playtest of the system. Mike is a bigger fan of samurai movies than I am, so I feel handicapped at making suggestions to give it more of a samurai "feel." The fact that my lord survived, despite his horrible luck (he rolled more "1's" than all other numbers combined, I think!), shows me it has a cinematic feel. The heroes don't necessarily die, but escape to fight another day. 

The fact that we all knew what to do and just asked Mike for rulings on minor matters showed that the system certainly flows well. I look forward to trying it out again.